Fragments Of War
by Cruelest Sea
Summary: Some moments of war are never forgotten. One shots: Ashes Ashes; Facing Home; The Way He Should Go. Some pre or post-series.
1. Ashes Ashes

**_Ashes, Ashes_**

_"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon_

He has that feeling in the pit of his stomach again.

Sometimes it's only a jitter, a flutter against his bones that tells him that this is bad, that this may be it. Today it's a hammer, pounding against him, shattering the marrow, leaving him with a painful shiver of fear clawing it's way down his backbone. He chokes it back into submission.

The air reeks of smoke and gunpowder and the metallic scent of blood. It smells of death.

Kirby is frightened, sick to his core, but he'll never admit it.

They're alone here, lying on an empty patch of grass mere feet from the wreckage of the last battle and the beginning of this one. They're all that's left of King Company, the others wounded and carried back, dead or dying. The crimson element of life still stains the ground around them like a magic circle, a gory halo outlining what might prove to be their last stand.

Beside him he can hear Caje, his voice barely above a whisper, French words flowing together in a jumble of sounds and syllables. Kirby doesn't know if it's a prayer for the dead, for the dying, or simply a meaningless string of words. He doesn't care.

There might as well be only he and Caje and the Germans left in the world for as far as he can see there's not another sign of life - no soldiers, no civilians, no animals or birds. Not even the grass, charred and withered from repeated barrage, moves.

There's a slight drizzle of rain starting, chasing away some of the smoke, giving him a faint and fuzzy view of the pillbox in front of them, beyond the tiny hill and in the center of an open field. Another hail of bullets erupt and they throw themselves as deep into the ground as they can without burying themselves alive.

His breath catches in his throat, raw and raspy. He can hear Caje breathing short pants for air beside him, the quiet struggle the only evidence of the other man's shared fear.

The machine gun pauses, as if waiting, searching for a movement of life.

He looks back at the Cajun only once, meeting hazel eyes through the smoke. There's a flicker within those eyes, a moment of doubt, of fear never expressed, a dirge for all that may be lost, that has already been lost. Kirby steadies his voice.

"On the count o' three."

It isn't a question but Caje nods, curt, as sharp an acknowledgement as always. Kirby has no right to give him orders, but there's no one here to order them, and somehow inponderably, he has become the leader.

"One."

His fingers dig into the metal of the BAR as Caje grips his gun, other hand clenching their last grenade.

"Two."

He thinks there's only a handful of Germans up there. There might be a chance, a slim hope. He squares his jaw, puts his shoulders back and prepares himself for whatever will happen next. Caje crouches like a tiger poised to spring, lean body hugging the damp hillside and he gets halfway up, ready.

"Three."

They run.


	2. Facing Home

**Facing Home**

_"Not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank, not lured by ambition, or goaded by necessity, but in Simple Obedience to Duty as they understood it, these men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all – and died." - Arlington National Cemetery_

He's come a long way, across the sea and onto land that a half century ago men fought and died upon.

He was one of them, soldiers who'd landed on a single strip of sand, ordinary men who'd fought and finally won.

But so many had died. He can see the crosses and stars of David, stretching into the horizon like a field of stone, each cross a life, a man just like him. It humbles him to stand here, to remember, to realize how precious and fragile life truly is.

He stops, his shadow falling across the grave, the one he's been searching for all morning. His hand trembles as he trases the name, curls his fingers into the carved stone.

They had been so young that day, full of life, of the excitement felt only by those who have never tasted war. They had felt brave, and invincible.

A sound, the memory of a desperate cry, echoes down through the years, tied to the memory of his friend jerking with the impact of bullets tearing through his chest as he tumbled backwards off to the cliffs and to the sand below. He can still feel his throat bleeding as he screams himself hoarse, feel the hands dragging him back, holding him away from the edge, sparing him the sight of his best friend's body. He remembers the numbness that spread through him, the fog that shrouded him, softening enough of the pain to keep him going, keep him alive.

For weeks after he'd come back to life he'd kept his distance, afraid to make another friend, lose another friend. It had taken him so long to open up again, to dare to care about someone without the fear of having his heart ripped open.

_You lose a lot of friends in this war._

He's lost many friends since that day on the beaches, but somehow this death is most vivid. Perhaps because it was the last day he was young, the day he became an old man. There are no boys in war, not after a while.

But there is humanity, even in the face of so much death. Even after all these years he can feel Kirby slap his helmet, encouraging him as he lines up the bazooka against the pillbox on that hill they lost so many men. He can remember the grenade in the German hospital exploding, and Sarge falling across him, shielding him with his own body against the shrapnel. And a hundred other moments, so small and yet so important.

He studies the name with a reverence, a memory of childhood days and a long-forgotten song. He'd sacrificed, they all had, but not as much as his friend, as the men who rested here, names facing toward home, to the country they'd left behind, and the lost future they might have had, the girls they never married, the wives they never kissed again, the babies they never saw, the children never born.

He wonders if anyone else will remember, a hundred years from now, remember a strip of sand and all those who had died. Would it even seem real so far in the future? Would they honor the memory, or brush it aside without a thought? He has no way of knowing, but he can hope with all his heart that they won't forget.

He touches the name one final time, a goodbye never said all those years before.

"I won't forget, Theo." the man says quietly, the French words slipping like a melody from his lips. "I won't forget."


	3. The Way He Should Go

It's always struck me that Kirby's attitude toward the Germans went a lot deeper than just the war and while rewatching a couple episodes this idea popped into my head.

_**The Way He Should Go**_

_"Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows."-John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells_

She first turns up on a Saturday while he's carving his initials into the side of a ramshackle fence, and he catches her out of the corner of his eyes, a silent shadow a little to the left of him. He waves his knife at her but she doesn't run away and even after he crosses the street she follows him, standing against the base of the steps as he settles at the top.

He's an angry, dirty little child and if she was a boy they'd be scrambling in the dirt as he beats her bloody right now. She looks horribly out of place, clean and shining against the filthy streets, polished shoes and braided hair, soft and fragile like one of his sister's dolls. He's staring at her so she climbs the stairs, hopping up them like a little bird.

"Where'd ya come from?" He asks finally as she sits down beside him and tucks her skirt in around her knees.

"Back there." She tosses her head toward the other side of town, the one he rarely goes to and the one no one from comes here. It's clean and crisp on that side of town, as pressed and washed as the girl.

"Why don't ya go back there?"

She smiles and it's like the sun from the clouds. "I like it better here."

He snorts. Nobody likes it better here. She tilts her head to the right, a habit he'll soon learn is as much a part of her as the smiles and the skip in her walk.

"Can I stay?"

He shrugs carelessly and she beams as if he'd told her she could move in. She's not as annoying as most girls, he supposes, and after a while she'll get tired of being here and leave.

"What are you called?" Not _what's your name_ or _what do you go by_.

"Bill." He says tightly.

"Not Billy?"

He puffs out his chest. He's too old for baby names and William G. Kirby is a mouthful even for him. Bill is tough, grown up. She purses her lips together, a perfect heart like the frilly valentines some of the other kids get at school.

"I like Billy better."

There's no arguments or chance for him to correct her. It's Billy and it's final and he simply gets used to it. He thinks that for a girl she's not so bad.

oooOOOooo

It's been two weeks and they're sitting on the top steps, eating some candy he swiped from Mr. Peterson's store. She licks her fingers in a decidedly undainty way and he takes sticky hands and wipes them down his shirt.

She's an odd sort, he thinks, always with him and never with other girls or kids from her side of town. She never seems annoyed that he's grubby or that he's got scabs on his knees, and she doesn't shriek at the rat he's almost tamed. She likes the jazz music that comes from the building upstairs and she stares into windows of closed shops and imagines buying whatever she can see, just like him. He's never known a girl like her, only the tomboys that play in the streets or the crybabies like his little sister, and he thinks she might be an _original_ as his dad used to say.

"Why don't you play with the other girls?" He asks her, smearing his hand across his sleeve. She looks over at him and grabs the second to last piece of candy, stuffing it whole into her mouth.

"Because I like being with you." She says around the bulge in her cheek, then giggles and scrambles down the steps as he chases after her and tries to stick the last candy in her hair.

oooOOOooo

He's known her most of the summer and he supposes they're friends now even if he's never said so. He's carving his name into another fencepost when she asks him for the knife and he drops it into her hand. She cuts the wood carefully, carving her own name beneath his and encircling both with a heart.

"What's that for?" He eyes it skeptically. It looks sissy and he's just about to scratch his name out when she beams that smile at him.

"So we'll never forget each other, no matter what."

"Like blood brothers?"

"Oooh." She extends his knife. "I've never done that before. Can we, Billy?"

So he cuts his own finger and then her smaller one and they press them together, the droplets mingling and rubbed tightly between their fingertips.

"We'll always be friends, now, won't we?" Her voice is bright.

"I guess so." He tucks the knife back in his pocket.

"We will." Her smile widens. "Mama says I have a gift for knowing things. And I know we'll never ever forget each other." She twirls then and dances away from him. And for a little while he believes her.

oooOOOooo

It's the first day of fall and they stay out until it's dusk and then he brushes the dirt off his clothes to make himself neat enough to walk her back to her side of town. She's perched in a patch of sunlight that dances across her hair and he feels a funny prickle at the back of his neck as he realizes that she's pretty, the prettiest girl he's ever seen.

When she leans forward to straighten his collar he kisses her. It's an awkward kiss, more on her chin than mouth, and he isn't even sure how to kiss a girl but she doesn't break it off until he does. When he pulls back her eyes are glittering up at him, those huge blue eyes that make her look like the angels in the store window at Christmas.

"I'm gonna marry you when we grow up." He tells her, and he means it, with every beat of his childish heart.

"And I'll love you till the day I die." She says very seriously, as if they're already grown up. And then she leans forward and kisses him on his dirty cheek to seal the promise.

oooOOOooo

Two weeks later she's dead, and he doesn't even know about it until four days later when he keeps looking for her and she never turns up. He walks all the way across town to the big white house on the corner and he rings the bell, rocking on his feet until a thin man with glasses answers and tells him when he asks.

She got hit by a car crossing the street, one that never saw her, and he can't understand how someone could not see her, as pretty and bright and alive as she was. It was a German who did it, the man with the funny name who owns the butcher shop, her father says, and he doesn't look like his daughter at all, not with the hard lines around his mouth and the bits of broken glass in his eyes. A German just like the ones who started the big war that killed her father's brother, Germans with guns and mustard gas, a name that reminds him of sandwiches and might have made him laugh if they hadn't had cars, too, that killed her. He wants to say something but the man shuts the door in his face and leaves him outside.

He doesn't cry. William G. Kirby never cries, he's much too old for that. But he does ball his hands into fists until his nails bite into the flesh of his palms, and kick the front steps of her clean white house until his toes hurt and the man comes back out and sends him away with a few harsh words. He digs his fists into his face, smearing dirt across his cheeks, and dust falls from his eyes.

He repeats the name of the German who killed her a few times and after a while he finds himself walking past the shop with that name. There's a rock on the curb and a plate glass window and he hurls the first through the second with all his strength before running the six blocks home like sirens are screaming behind him.

He gets caught anyway and he's made to break open his piggy bank and pay the man back but it doesn't matter because he waits a week and breaks it again, this time late when the store is closed and no one sees him as he screams something about _filthy Germans_, and never bothers to wonder where exactly Germany is on a map. He doesn't care because summer's over and _she's dead_ and they're never getting to grow up or marry or eat another piece of candy on the steps and a German killed her and he wants to kill him. But he can't because he's only a little dirty and angry boy so he breaks his windows instead of his bones.

And he thinks, perhaps, that if he'd learned anything from this summer it would have been something pretty and shining like friendship or love. But it wasn't. He's learned hate.


End file.
